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 Richard Wagner -
Manifesting Generator - Biography
Wilhelm Richard Wagner (22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer,
conductor, music theorist, and essayist, primarily known for his operas (or "music
dramas" as he later came to call them). Unlike most other great opera composers,
Wagner always wrote the scenario and libretto for his works himself.
Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for
their contrapuntal texture, rich chromaticism, harmonies and orchestration, and
elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with specific characters,
locales, or plot elements. Wagner pioneered advances in musical language including
extreme chromaticism and atonality which greatly influenced the development of
European classical music.
He transformed musical thought through his idea of Gesamtkunstwerk ("total
artwork"), the synthesis of all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts,
epitomized by his monumental four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876).
Wagner even went so far as to build his own opera-house to try to stage these works
as he had imagined them.
Early life
Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who
was a clerk in the Leipzig police service. Wagner's father died of typhus six
months after Richard's birth, following which Wagner's mother, Johanna Rosine
Wagner, began living with the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer, who had been a
friend of Richard's father. In August 1814 Johanna married Geyer, and moved with
her family to his residence in Dresden. For the first 14 years of his life, Wagner
was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. Wagner in his later years may have suspected
that Geyer was in fact his biological father, and furthermore speculated (wrongly)
that Geyer was Jewish.
Geyer's love of the theatre was shared by his step-son, and Wagner even took part
in performances. In his autobiography Wagner recalled on one occasion playing the
part of an angel. The boy Wagner was also hugely impressed by the Gothic elements
of Weber's Der Freischutz. At the end of 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor
Wetzel's school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano
instruction from his Latin teacher, but could not manage a proper scale and mostly
preferred playing theater overtures by ear. Geyer died in 1821, when Richard was
eight. Following this, Wagner was sent to the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden, paid
for by Geyer's brother. The young Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright, his
first creative effort being a gruesome tragedy, Leubald und Adelaide begun at
school in 1826, which was strongly influenced by Shakespeare and Goethe. Wagner
determined to set this to music and persuaded his family to allow him music
lessons.
By 1827, the family had moved back to Leipzig. Wagner's first lessons in
composition were taken between 1828-31 with Christian Gottlieb Müller, but it was
Beethoven who would first inspire him. In January of 1828 he first heard
Beethoven's 7th Symphony and then, in March, Beethoven's 9th Symphony performed in
the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Beethoven became his muse, and Wagner wrote a piano
transcription of the 9th Symphony as well as piano sonatas and orchestral
overtures. In 1829 he saw the dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient on
stage, and she became his ideal of the fusion of drama and music in opera. In his
autobiography, Wagner wrote:
“ If I look back on my life as a whole, I can find no event that produced so
profound an impression upon me. ”
Wagner claimed to have seen Schröder-Devrient in the title role of Fidelio, however
it seems more likely that he saw her performance as Romeo in Bellini's I Capuleti e
i Montecchi. He enrolled at the University of Leipzig in 1831, however his formal
music training was brief, comprising a few months with Christian Theodor Weinlig,
the music director at the Leipzig Kreuzkirke. Weinlig was so impressed with
Wagner's musical ability that he refused any payment for his lessons, and arranged
for one of Wagner's piano works to be published. A year later, Wagner composed his
Symphony in C major, a Beethovenian work which gave him his first opportunity as a
conductor in 1832. He then began to work on an opera, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding),
which was never completed.
In 1833, Wagner's older brother Karl Albert managed to obtain Richard a position as
chorusmaster in Würzburg. In the same year, at the age of 20, Wagner composed his
first complete opera, Die Feen (The Fairies). This opera, which clearly imitated
the style of Carl Maria von Weber, would go unproduced until half a century later,
when it was premiered in Munich shortly after the composer's death in 1883.
Meanwhile, Wagner held brief appointments as musical director at opera houses in
Magdeburg and Königsberg, during which he wrote Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love),
based on William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. This second opera was staged at
Magdeburg in 1836, but closed before the second performance, leaving the composer
(not for the last time) in serious financial difficulties.
On 24 November 1836, Wagner married actress Christine Wilhelmine "Minna" Planer.
They moved to the city of Riga, then in the Russian Empire, where Wagner became
music director of the local opera. A few weeks afterward, Minna ran off with an
army officer who then abandoned her, penniless. Wagner took Minna back; however,
this was but the first debâcle of a troubled marriage that would end in misery
three decades later.
By 1839, the couple had amassed such large debts that they fled Riga to escape from
creditors (debt would plague Wagner for most of his life). During their flight,
they and their Newfoundland dog, Robber, took a stormy sea passage to London, from
which Wagner drew the inspiration for Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying
Dutchman). The Wagners spent 1840 and 1841 in Paris, where Richard made a scant
living writing articles and arranging operas by other composers, largely on behalf
of the Schlesinger publishing house. He also completed Rienzi and Der Fliegende
Holländer during this time.
 Dresden
Wagner completed writing his third opera, Rienzi, in 1840. Largely through the
agency of Meyerbeer, it was accepted for performance by the Dresden Court Theatre
(Hofoper) in the German state of Saxony. Thus in 1842, the couple moved to Dresden,
where Rienzi was staged to considerable acclaim. Wagner lived in Dresden for the
next six years, eventually being appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. During
this period, he wrote and staged Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman
(opera)) and Tannhäuser, the first two of his three middle-period operas.
The Wagners' stay at Dresden was brought to an end by Richard's involvement in
left-wing politics. A nationalist movement was gaining force in the independent
German States, calling for constitutional freedoms and the unification of the weak
princely states into a single nation. Richard Wagner played an enthusiastic role in
this movement, receiving guests at his house that included his colleague August
Röckel, who was editing the radical left-wing paper Volksblätter, and the Russian
anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.
Widespread discontent against the Saxon government came to a head in April 1849,
when King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony dissolved Parliament and rejected a new
constitution pressed upon him by the people. The May Uprising broke out, in which
Wagner played a minor supporting role. The incipient revolution was quickly crushed
by an allied force of Saxon and Prussian troops, and warrants were issued for the
arrest of the revolutionaries. Wagner had to flee, first to Paris and then to
Zürich. Röckel and Bakunin failed to escape and endured long terms of
imprisonment.
Exile,
Schopenhauer and Mathilde Wesendonck
Wagner spent the next twelve years in exile. He had completed Lohengrin before the
Dresden uprising, and now wrote desperately to his friend Franz Liszt to have it
staged in his absence. Liszt, who proved to be a friend in need, eventually
conducted the premiere in Weimar in August 1850.
Nevertheless, Wagner found himself in grim personal straits, isolated from the
German musical world and without any income to speak of. The musical sketches he
was penning, which would grow into the mammoth work Der Ring des Nibelungen, seemed
to have no prospects of being performed. His wife Minna, who had disliked the
operas he had written after Rienzi, was falling into a deepening depression.
Finally, he fell victim to erysipelas, which made it difficult for him to continue
writing.
Wagner's primary published output during his first years in Zürich was a set of
notable essays: The Art-Work of the Future (1849), in which he described a vision
of opera as Gesamtkunstwerk, or "total artwork", in which the various arts such as
music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts, and stagecraft were unified; Judaism in
Music (1850), a tract directed against Jewish composers; and Opera and Drama
(1851), which described ideas in aesthetics that he was putting to use on the Ring
operas.
By 1852 Wagner had completed the libretto of the four Ring operas, and he began
composing Das Rheingold in November 1853, following it immediately with Die Walkure
in 1854. He then began work on the third opera, Siegfried in 1856, but finished
only the first two acts before deciding to put the work aside to concentrate on a
new idea: Tristan und Isolde.
Wagner had two independent sources of inspiration for Tristan und Isolde. The first
came to him in 1854, when his poet friend Georg Herwegh introduced him to the works
of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Wagner would later call this the most
important event of his life. His personal circumstances certainly made him an easy
convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer's philosophy - a deeply
pessimistic view of the human condition. He would remain an adherent of
Schopenhauer for the rest of his life, even after his fortunes improved.
One of Schopenhauer's doctrines was that music held a supreme role amongst the
arts, since it was the only one unconcerned with the material world. Wagner quickly
embraced this claim, which must have resonated strongly despite its direct
contradiction with his own arguments, in "Opera and Drama", that music in opera had
to be subservient to the cause of drama. Wagner scholars have since argued that
this Schopenhauerian influence caused Wagner to assign a more commanding role to
music in his later operas, including the latter half of the Ring cycle, which he
had yet to compose. Many aspects of Schopenhauerian doctrine undoubtedly found its
way into Wagner's subsequent libretti. For example, the self-renouncing
cobbler-poet Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger, generally considered Wagner's most
sympathetic character, is a quintessentially Schopenhauerian creation (despite
being based on a real person).
Wagner's second source of inspiration was the poet-writer Mathilde Wesendonck, the
wife of the silk merchant Otto von Wesendonck. Wagner met the Wesendoncks in Zürich
in 1852. Otto, a fan of Wagner's music, placed a cottage on his estate at Wagner's
disposal. By 1857, Wagner had become infatuated with Mathilde.
Richard and Cosima Wagner.Though Mathilde seems to have returned some of his
affections, she had no intention of jeopardising her marriage, and kept her husband
informed of her contacts with Wagner. Nevertheless, the affair inspired Wagner to
put aside his work on the Ring cycle (which would not be resumed for the next
twelve years) and begin work on Tristan und Isolde, based on the Arthurian love
story.
The uneasy affair collapsed in 1858, when Minna intercepted a letter from Wagner to
Mathilde. After the resulting confrontation, Wagner left Zürich alone, bound for
Venice. The following year, he once again moved to Paris to oversee production of a
new revision of Tannhäuser, staged thanks to the efforts of Princess de Metternich.
The premiere of the Paris Tannhäuser in 1861 was an utter fiasco, due to
disturbances caused by members of the Jockey Club. Further performances were
cancelled, and Wagner hurriedly left the city.
In 1861, the political ban against Wagner in Germany was lifted, and the composer
settled in Biebrich, Prussia, where he began work on Die Meistersinger von
Nürnberg. Despite the failure of Tannhäuser in Paris, the possibility that Der Ring
des Nibelungen would never be finished and Wagner's unhappy personal life, this
opera is by far his sunniest work. Wagner's second wife Cosima would later write:
"when future generations seek refreshment in this unique work, may they spare a
thought for the tears from which the smiles arose." In 1862, Wagner finally parted
with Minna, though he (or at least his creditors) continued to support her
financially until her death in 1866.
Between 1861 and 1864 Wagner tried to have Tristan und Isolde produced in Vienna.
Despite over 70 rehearsals the opera remained unperformed, and gained a reputation
as being "unplayable", which further added to Wagner's financial woes.
Patronage of King Ludwig
II
Wagner's fortunes took a dramatic upturn in 1864, when King Ludwig II assumed the
throne of Bavaria at the age of 18. The young king, an ardent admirer of Wagner's
operas since childhood, had the composer brought to Munich. He settled Wagner's
considerable debts, and made plans to have his new operas produced. After grave
difficulties in rehearsal, Tristan und Isolde premiered to enormous success at the
National Theatre in Munich on 10 June 1865, the first Wagner premiere in almost 15
years.
In the meantime, Wagner became embroiled in another affair, this time with Cosima
von Bülow, the wife of the conductor Hans von Bülow, one of Wagner's most ardent
supporters and the conductor of the Tristan premiere. Cosima was the illegitimate
daughter of Franz Liszt and the famous Countess Marie d'Agoult, and 24 years
younger than Wagner. Liszt disapproved of his daughter seeing Wagner, though the
two men were friends. In April 1865, she gave birth to Wagner's illegitimate
daughter, who was named Isolde. Their indiscreet affair scandalized Munich, and to
make matters worse, Wagner fell into disfavor amongst members of the court, who
were suspicious of his influence on the king. In December 1865, Ludwig was finally
forced to ask the composer to leave Munich. He apparently also toyed with the idea
of abdicating in order to follow his hero into exile, but Wagner quickly dissuaded
him.
Ludwig installed Wagner at the villa Tribschen, beside Switzerland's Lake Lucerne.
Die Meistersinger was completed at Tribschen in 1867, and premiered in Munich on 21
June the following year. In October, Cosima finally convinced Hans von Bülow to
grant her a divorce, but not before having two more children with Wagner. They had
another daughter, named Eva, and a son named Siegfried. Richard and Cosima were
married on 25 August 1870. (Liszt would not speak to his new son-in-law for years
to come.) On Christmas Day of that year, Wagner presented the Siegfried Idyll for
Cosima's birthday. The marriage to Cosima lasted to the end of Wagner's life.
Bayreuth
Richard Wagner at Bayreuth. Liszt, who was also his father-in-law, can be seen at
the piano.Wagner, settled into his newfound domesticity, turned his energies toward
completing the Ring cycle. At Ludwig's insistence, "special previews" of the first
two works of the cycle, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, were performed at Munich,
but Wagner wanted the complete cycle to be performed in a new, specially-designed
opera house.
In 1871, he decided on the small town of Bayreuth as the location of his new opera
house. The Wagners moved there the following year, and the foundation stone for the
Bayreuth Festspielhaus ("Festival House") was laid. In order to raise funds for the
construction, "Wagner societies" were formed in several cities, and Wagner himself
began touring Germany conducting concerts. However, sufficient funds were only
raised after King Ludwig stepped in with another large grant in 1874. Later that
year, the Wagners moved into their permanent home at Bayreuth, a villa that Richard
dubbed Wahnfried ("Peace/freedom from delusion/madness", in German).
The Festspielhaus finally opened in August 1876 with the premiere of the Ring cycle
and has continued to be the site of the Bayreuth Festival ever since.
Final
years
Memorial bust of Richard Wagner in Venice.
Grave of Richard and Cosima Wagner in the garden of the Villa Wahnfried, BayreuthIn
1877, Wagner moved to Acireale in Italy where he began work on Parsifal, his final
opera. The composition took four years, during which he also wrote a series of
increasingly reactionary essays on religion and art.
Wagner completed Parsifal in January 1882, and a second Bayreuth Festival was held
for the new opera. Wagner was by this time extremely ill, having suffered through a
series of increasingly severe angina attacks. During the sixteenth and final
performance of Parsifal on 29 August, he secretly entered the pit during Act III,
took the baton from conductor Hermann Levi, and led the performance to its
conclusion.
After the Festival, the Wagner family journeyed to Venice for the winter. On 13
February 1883, Richard Wagner died of a heart attack in the Palazzo Vendramin on
the Grand Canal. His body was returned to Bayreuth and buried in the garden of the
Villa Wahnfried.
Franz Liszt's memorable piece for pianoforte solo, La lugubre gondola, evokes the
passing of a black-shrouded funerary gondola bearing Richard Wagner's remains over
the Grand Canal.
Works
Opera
Wagner's music dramas are his primary artistic legacy. These can be divided
chronologically into three periods.
Wagner's early stage began at age 19 with his first attempt at an opera, Die
Hochzeit (The Wedding), which Wagner abandoned at an early stage of composition in
1832. Wagner's three completed early-stage operas are Die Feen (The Fairies), Das
Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), and Rienzi. Their compositional style was
conventional, and did not exhibit the innovations that marked Wagner's place in
musical history. Later in life, Wagner said that he did not consider these immature
works to be part of his oeuvre; he was irritated by the ongoing popularity of
Rienzi during his lifetime. These works are seldom performed, though the overture
to Rienzi has become a concert piece.
Wagner's middle stage output is considered to be of remarkably higher quality, and
begins to show the deepening of his powers as a dramatist and composer. This period
began with Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), followed by Tannhäuser
and Lohengrin. These works are widely performed today.
Wagner's late stage operas are his masterpieces that advanced the art of opera.
Some are of the opinion that Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Iseult) is Wagner's
greatest single opera. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of
Nuremberg) is Wagner's only comedy (apart from his early and forgotten Das
Liebesverbot) and one of the lengthiest operas still performed. Der Ring des
Nibelungen, commonly referred to as the Ring cycle, is a set of four operas based
loosely on figures and elements of Teutonic myth, particularly from later period
Norse mythology. Taking around 20 years to complete, and requiring roughly 15 hours
to perform, the Ring cycle has been called the most ambitious musical work ever
composed. Wagner's final opera, Parsifal, which was written especially for the
opening of Wagner's Festspielhaus in Bayreuth and which is described in the score
as a "Bühnenweihfestspiel" (festival play for the consecration of the stage), is a
contemplative work based on the Christian legend of the Holy Grail.
Wagner drew largely from Northern European mythology and legend, notably Icelandic
epics such as the Poetic Edda, the Volsunga Saga and the later German
Nibelungenlied. Through his operas and theoretical essays, Wagner exerted a strong
influence on the operatic medium. He was an advocate of a new form of opera which
he called "music drama", in which all the musical and dramatic elements were fused
together. Unlike other opera composers, who generally left the task of writing the
libretto (the text and lyrics) to others, Wagner wrote his own libretti, which he
referred to as "poems". Further, Wagner developed a compositional style in which
the orchestra's role is equal to that of the singers. The orchestra's dramatic role
includes its performance of the leitmotifs, musical themes that announce specific
characters, locales, and plot elements; their complex interleaving and evolution
illuminates the progression of the drama.
Wagner's musical style is often considered the epitome of classical music's
Romantic period, due to its unprecedented exploration of emotional expression. He
introduced new ideas in harmony and musical form, including extreme chromaticism.
In Tristan und Isolde, he explored the limits of the traditional tonal system that
gave keys and chords their identity, pointing the way to atonality in the 20th
century. Some music historians date the beginning of modern classical music to the
first notes of Tristan, the so-called Tristan chord.
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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